After a mixed night of action at Strikeforce: Overeem Vs Werdum, the company’s CEO Scott Coker spoke to MMAfighting’s Ariel Helwani about his thoughts on the event.

Read they keynotes from their conversation below.

– Scott Coker’s assessment on Overeem’s performance was that he had fought smartly by refusing to be drawn into Werdum’s strategy to get him to the mat. He believes he ‘clearly won’ the fight, though does admit that the Strikeforce champion looked to have a little ring-rust after being out of MMA action for a year or so.

– Coker compares Werdum’s performance as similar to Shinya Aoki’s against Gilbert Melendez last year in which the Japanese fighter had stuck to his gameplan of trying to get the fight to the ground with little success.

– Despite noting that the style match-up on this occasion made for a “bad fight”, he believes that the semi-final pairing of Overeem Vs ‘Bigfoot’ Silva will be the exact opposite.

– Coker states that he had expected Josh Barnett to defeat Brett Rogers by submission due to his superior ground game.

– He’ll need to go back and evaluate whether anyone got seriously injured, but Coker expects that the tournament semi-finals will happen in “early fall.” He also confirms that both bouts will take place on the same card.

– As for Jorge Masvidal’s win over KJ Noons, Coker believes that this was enough to warrant the fighter earning a title shot against current lightweight champion Gilbert Melendez, and commends him on being a “complete fighter.”

– Coker hints that despite heavyweight GP alternates Chad Griggs and Daniel Cormier winning tonight, the winner of next month’s Dan Henderson Vs Fedor Emelianenko fight could also be considered if a replacement was needed at any stage in the tournament.

– As for the tournament final being on PPV, Coker is hedging his bets and says they’ll have to wait and see which fighters gets there first.

– Finally, Coker reads out a statement regarding Gina Carano that says that she’s received medical training and hopes to return to training soon.

Ross launched MMA Insight (previously FightOfTheNight.com) in 2009 as a way to channel his passion for the sport of mixed martial arts. He's since penned countless news stories and live fight reports along with dozens of feature articles as the lead writer for the site, reaching millions of fans in the process.

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